FLOOD OF APATHY

THE COUNTRY'S NORTHWEST HAS BEEN DEVASTATED BY EXTREME WEATHER PATTERNS THIS MONSOON. IT'S ALSO TESTED THE RESILIENCE OF PEOPLE AND GOVERNMENTS, AS WELL AS THE LIMITS OF RELIEF

- ANILESH S. MAHAJAN

THE WATERS HAVE STARTED TO RECEDE BACK INTO THE RAVI, but life in Gurchak village, in the Dera Baba Nanak area of Gurdaspur district, Punjab, will take months to return to normal.

The village's 650 acres of farmland remain fully submerged, while another 1,100 acres are heavy with murky pools and silt from the monstrous surge on August 27. That afternoon, minutes after the floodgates at the Madhopur barrage near Pathankot were breached, the rampaging Ravi tore through temporary embankments, transforming what were once lush green fields into scenes of devastation. By the end of the day, the river had swollen 3-4 km on both sides. Two weeks later, the air here is still dank with the stench of rotting crops and dead livestock. Gurchak is emblematic of Punjab’s monsoon ordeal this year. Across the state, around 1,900 villages were inundated, 56 people died, and some 480,000 acres of farmland have gone under.